


001 "introduction"

by wheel_pen



Series: Iron Man AU [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Fish out of Water, My Pepper is different, Pre-Iron Man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 20:14:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/752592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Tony and Pepper meet for the first time, and Tony first tests her multitasking skills. He's still undecided about whether she'll be suitable. "Short-term competency wasn't the problem. Endurance was the problem."</p>
            </blockquote>





	001 "introduction"

**Author's Note:**

> 1) My Pepper is very different from canon Pepper. Her personality/origin is very different; to separate her from canon Pepper I've given her a new last name and a different hair color.
> 
> 2) The bad words are censored. That's just how I do things.
> 
> 3) Stories are numbered in the order I wrote them, which isn't necessarily the order in which they occur. At some point I'll post a timeline.
> 
> I wrote this series after the first Iron Man movie came out. It's very AU but I hope you'll enjoy it anyway. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play with these characters.

            It was a Thursday, I think. I wasn't good at keeping track of the days. Hence why I needed an assistant. I was in the studio, sketching a new design for a rocket launcher. See, the problem with the standard sort of rocket launcher at that time was—well, you don't care about that. Suffice it to say that _my_ design was revolutionary and brilliant, as usual. Or it _would_ be, when it was finished—I could feel it, that kind of tingling that told me I was on to something really spectacular, and I just couldn't sketch it fast enough to get all the brilliance out before it vanished. That's why I hate being interrupted when I'm working. I never know what innovation might be lost forever because someone has distracted me with a triviality.

            Ms. Gilson knew all this. She knew all this because I had told her, many times, at various volumes, with various colorful exclamations thrown in. She just didn't seem to believe me. Granted, I bulls—tted a lot, so sometimes I _shouldn't_ have been believed. But designing was one thing—at that time, the _only_ thing—I took very seriously.

            I wasn't even going to let her in when she buzzed, but of course she had her own override code. It was really only supposed to be used in case of emergency, but it wasn't like I could really say, "This isn't an emergency!" and override the override. Well, I could, but then knowing me I'd do it when it really _was_ an emergency and they'd find me dead on the floor when they finally cut through the wall with a blowtorch.

            My point is, I didn't like to be interrupted when I was working. But Ol' Blue Gill interrupted me anyway. So I wasn't in a great mood when she clomped in, her heavy shoes thumping on the concrete floor. There was a second sound this time, though, a click-click-click, and I looked up from my laptop with a mixture of irritation and curiosity.

            That was the first time I saw her. Tall, blond, definitely a stunner but with kind of a snub nose that made you think she might have been a tomboy as a kid. Skinny, too, the kind of woman lame guys hit on by asking if she was a model. She was wearing a suit, dark blue, decent but not that great quality—and a pair of really painful-looking, really expensive stiletto heels, which were making the clicking sounds. I noted that she was beautiful; but to be honest I was often surrounded by beautiful women, all of whom dressed better and carried themselves with far more self-confidence than this one. I went back to my work.

            "Ms. Gilson, you shouldn't have," I said dryly, indicating the visitor. "And it's not even my birthday."

            Ms. Gilson rolled her eyes, humorless as always. "Mr. Stark. This is the person I'm training as your new assistant."

            Now I rolled _my_ eyes. Ol' Blue Gill had been trying to squirm out of my service for six months now. She'd been pretty good, really, as far as assistants went, but her personality was as flat as day-old champagne. I wouldn't exactly shed tears at her departure. But there was a clause in her contract saying that if she didn't find and train a suitable replacement, she had to forfeit a sizable chunk of change. Her trials in this had been modestly amusing to me.

            "That's the third one this month, isn't it?" I remarked. There was always a huge list of candidates who wanted a shot at being assistant to one of the handsomest, most dynamic, wealthiest men on Earth (me). But when they realized that 1) it was an insane amount of work and 2) I could be a demanding, obnoxious b-----d, suddenly most of them dropped out.

            "Only the second," the Big Gill corrected peevishly. (If you're wondering about all the fish metaphors, trust me, you would understand if you looked at her. Especially when she was peevish.) "This is Pepper Smith."

            My attention was drawn by that, as Gillface surely knew it would be. I _am_ kind of like a five-year-old in that respect. "Your name is _Pepper_?" I asked in disbelief. "Seriously?"

            "Yes, sir," she replied with a pleasant smile.

            "Your parents must not have had high hopes for you," I decided. "Really, Gilly, I'm impressed that you thought of playing a practical joke, but I'm kind of busy right now." I went back to work. 

            "It's no joke, Mr. Stark," Ms. Gilson informed me stiffly.

            There. Right when she spoke, a bit of genius was about to flow from my brain to the stylus to the laptop screen, and it got completely derailed by her fishy, intractable voice. See what I mean? I couldn't _work_ in these conditions.

            I pitched the stylus across the room. (I was sober, or the laptop would've gone, too.) "Well what else do you call it, if not a f-----g joke?" I asked meanly. "I need an executive assistant. You've brought me Miss Cheddar Queen in a bargain-basement suit. I think you're getting a little desperate, don't you?"

            Ms. Gilson steamed up like a crab—it didn't take much to boil her blood, really—but the blond just looked at me quizzically. "Well, I _do_ like dairy products," she finally said.

            It would've been hilarious if I'd been in the right mood, or known her better. Instead I threw up my hands in utter disgust. "And she should be _smarter_ than a block of cheese, too," I continued.

            "I assure you, Mr. Stark, that Ms. Smith is very well-qualified—" the Gillface began, sputtering.

            "Clearly, we have different standards," I interrupted. "Listen, _honey_ —"

            "Pepper," she corrected helpfully.

            I rubbed my eyes tiredly—I had been out late, again, and was subsisting on three hours' sleep and a lot of caffeine. Which was to say, the usual. "I don't care what the h—l your name is," I snapped. "But the next time I see you, if I _have_ to see you, you better be wearing a suit that costs more than a month's rent. And the skirt should either be shorter or tighter, I'll let you decide. You can keep the shoes, though. Now get out, both of you."

            The blond smiled and nodded as if I'd just given her a compliment and told her to have a nice day. That should have been a clue.

 

            The next time I saw her was three days later. She had followed my instructions about the attire, choosing to go with long and tight, which disappointed me somewhat. I'd had one assistant who really liked miniskirts (and looked good in them) and I was always hoping to find another, except one that was actually able to, you know, _assist_ properly. Although that was yet to be proven with this particular candidate anyway.

            She was click-clicking around my kitchen, cell phone glued to her ear, looking polished and chipper. I had literally crawled out of bed and was lucky to be wearing any clothing at all. Not a morning person, you might say.

            "Good morning, sir!" she said cheerfully.

            I grunted. "Get me—" A cup of coffee appeared before me on the counter. "With cream—"

            "Already added, sir."

            I took a sip. Well, so she had. "Where's my—" Orange juice. Saucer with three vitamin tablets. "What about—" The toaster popped up two pieces of toast, which she put on a plate.

            "Would you like me to butter them for you, sir?" she asked.

            I did. But I was grumpy that morning. All mornings, really. "No. I want strawberry jam." Another competent impression of a five-year-old. Sometimes _I_ even found it hard to believe I was CEO of a massive multinational corporation.

            "Okay." She put the jam on the counter and would have started spreading it on the toast for me when, apparently, her call went through. "Bonjour! Je m'appelle Pepper Smith, l'assistante personale à Tony Stark…"

            So she spoke French. Big deal. _I_ spoke French. So did all the people in France. Not impressive, really. Besides, she looked like the type who had gone to Paris for a year after high school to "find herself" or some c—p like that. Probably hung out at art galleries with a lot of shady starving art students. I tapped my spoon impatiently against the jam jar. I needed to test her multitasking skills, after all.

            She wedged the phone awkwardly between her shoulder and her ear and began putting jam on my toast for me, all the while speaking in French and listening to French. I wasn't paying enough attention to know what she was talking about, but it probably involved _me_ somehow.

            "Where's the—" Local newspaper appeared. "Not _that_ one," I protested, though it actually _was_ what I'd been thinking of. "I want the—" _Wall Street Journal._

            I was not deriving any satisfaction from this exercise yet. "Where's the Big Gill?" I demanded petulantly, though her fishy face wasn't exactly one I looked forward to seeing in the mornings.

            _Office_ , she wrote neatly on a piece of paper, while still absorbed in the phone call.

            "Which office? You mean here at the house?" I prodded asininely.

            _Downtown_ , she mouthed, without a hint of exasperation.

            "Downtown… New York?" I guessed. "Tokyo? London?"

            Suddenly a phrase she said in French caught my attention, because it was one you didn't usually hear in polite company. And impolite company was where I most often used French, so I knew those phrases well. Then she hung up the phone and said, "San Francisco."

            "What?" I asked in confusion, still pondering the uncivil French phrase.

            "Ms. Gilson is at the office downtown, here in San Francisco," Pepper explained, as if she really thought I didn't know.

            "Who were you talking to on the phone?"

            "The restaurant in Nice where you're going to eat after you speak at the design symposium," she told me.

            "You were a bit rude," I informed her primly, through a mouthful of the toast she'd fixed me.

            "I'm sorry, sir. I just wanted to make sure they were still holding your reservation," she replied, taking no offense. "Sometimes one has to be firm. Can I get you anything else, sir?"

            "What about—" My portfolio of business documents for the day. I occasionally liked to have a vague idea of what I was supposed to be doing before I walked into a work function.

            "I'll go lay out your clothes," she decided, starting to click-click away.

            "I want that new black Brioni," I called over my shoulder, getting jam on all the business memos and reports.

            "I think dark blue would look better with the décor in the conference room," she countered, already heading upstairs. Apparently I was due in the conference room today.

            I rolled my eyes. I'd had assistants who thought they were stylists before. I'd even had ones who could fix my breakfast and speak in two languages at the same time. Short-term competency wasn't the problem. Endurance was the problem.

 

            In the interests of retaining some general goodwill as a narrator I will refrain from detailing the many ways I tormented Pepper during those early days. Weeks. Months. I pulled every trick I knew from my long history of alienating nannies, tutors, and assistants. A sensible person might ask _why_ I felt the need to deliberately goad her, especially when most people found the normal day-to-day routine challenging enough. I _do_ have an answer for that. First it was a very reasonable test of her abilities and patience. Then it was a very reasonable exploration of where, exactly, her buttons were and how best to push them (which I don't mean in any kind of dirty way). After that, it was just for fun.

            The thing you have to realize is that Pepper is basically imperturbable. A sigh from her is like a scream of frustration from someone else. And a real smile is like weeping tears of joy. My life was not really very challenging in those days, so getting a rise out of my assistant was quite a time-filler. Besides, Pepper was just so… _efficient_. Click-click-click went those heels, all day and half the night, clearing a little circle of the world around me, so that anywhere I stepped I found plans had been laid for my comfort and security. And in her free time she cleaned up the messes I left trailing behind me.

            After a while, I just got used to her. She was always _there_ , always thinking about _me_. Which was something we had in common, since I was always thinking about me, too. Occasionally I thought to ask her a personal question and I usually learned something quite interesting when I did so, but in terms of behavior I had never been quick on the uptake; I was easily distracted by all the other people around me who clamored for attention. Pepper never clamored. She didn't _want_ that much attention, anyway. Or rather, scrutiny.

* * *


End file.
